That's why they call it the blues (Paths of Disharmony SPOILERS)

[Thestral]

Would Andorians be justified in being upset that, for whatever reason, technical data acquired in the 2260s that could have been used to save their species was classified badly and hidden for a century? Yes. Someone screwed the pooch on this one.

Someone screwed the pooch alright - but 120 years before these events.

Even if the Andorians weren't at all forthcoming, there would have been signs. A simple look at public-domain demographic indicators--at what ages Andorians became parents, how many children did they have, what was Andorian reproductive medicine like, what the total population was--would have indicated that something was up.

Maybe the Andorians treated their breeding problem the same way the Trill treated their Joined nature in the early days?

As T'Ryssa said in Heather Jarman's novella, the Andorians have reengineered their entire civilization to try to slow down the decline and it still isn't enough.

Huh? T'Ryssa Chen hadn't been introduced yet when Paradigm was written (and that's a short novel, not a novella). Do you mean Thriss?

I would guess he's referring to Prynn (and confusing her name with T'Prynn maybe?). By the time of Paradigm, Thriss is dead.

 

[rfmcdpei]

Would Andorians be justified in being upset that, for whatever reason, technical data acquired in the 2260s that could have been used to save their species was classified badly and hidden for a century? Yes. Someone screwed the pooch on this one.

Someone screwed the pooch alright - but 120 years before these events.

But the security system that the people 120 years before was still active.

I'm not saying that the Andorian reaction against the Federation was especially rational, but given the species' ongoing crisis the Andorian reaction would almost have to be very strongly anti-Federation. But expecting the Andorian reaction to this news not to be passionnate and irrational, given the intensity of the feelings involved, is itself a bit irrational.

I can see where they're coming from, is what I think I'm saying. If someone had picked up on the utility of the Shedai data in dealing with Andorian fertility concerns--which may not have been that severe yet in the 23rd century; population decline in the 24th may have been unexpected--then the old line about the kingdom falling for want of a nail is about.

Even if the Andorians weren't at all forthcoming, there would have been signs. A simple look at public-domain demographic indicators--at what ages Andorians became parents, how many children did they have, what was Andorian reproductive medicine like, what the total population was--would have indicated that something was up.

Maybe the Andorians treated their breeding problem the same way the Trill treated their Joined nature in the early days?

Perhaps certain of the details, but unless there was a complete embargo on statistics relating to the Andorians people who were interested would know that something was up. Since the Andorians reconfigured their entire civilization to try to cope, mandating early family formation at the expense of careers in the wider Federation (Shar's problem) and apparently disengaging from Federation affairs, something would have gotten out. The Andorian population was declining in Shar's lifetime; at least that statistic would stand out.

As T'Ryssa said in Heather Jarman's novella, the Andorians have reengineered their entire civilization to try to slow down the decline and it still isn't enough.

Huh? T'Ryssa Chen hadn't been introduced yet when Paradigm was written (and that's a short novel, not a novella). Do you mean Thriss?

I would guess he's referring to Prynn (and confusing her name with T'Prynn maybe?). By the time of Paradigm, Thriss is dead.

T'Prynn Vaughn, yes, my mistake!

 

[JD]

Prynn, no T'.

 

[BrotherBenny]

The Andorians have been tight-lipped about the reproductive crisis for decades. Wasn't it only in Andor: Paradigm that it really emerged to the Federation at large as a massive problem?

Had they trusted their own allies instead of being scared about how they would be treated or whatever, Federation scientists might have been able to assist earlier, perhaps even during the Taurus Metagenome research.

 

[Christopher]

T'Prynn Vaughn, yes, my mistake!

Her name is Prynn Tenmei. She was named in honor of Vaughn's old colleague T'Prynn of Vulcan, and she goes by the surname of her mother, Ruriko Tenmei.

 

[rfmcdpei]

T'Prynn Vaughn, yes, my mistake!

Her name is Prynn Tenmei. She was named in honor of Vaughn's old colleague T'Prynn of Vulcan, and she goes by the surname of her mother, Ruriko Tenmei.

Ack. Thanks for the correction.

 

[Therin of Andor]

expecting the Andorian reaction to this news not to be passionnate and irrational, given the intensity of the feelings involved, is itself a bit irrational!

"Devote yourself to motivations of passion or gain. Those are reasons for murder." - Ambassador Shras.

 

[rfmcdpei]

The Andorians have been tight-lipped about the reproductive crisis for decades. Wasn't it only in Andor: Paradigm that it really emerged to the Federation at large as a massive problem?

The precise details, maybe, but the fact that something was up would be evident to non-Andorians even without pirivleged information.

Population issues are a hobby of mine; I post about population-related issues extensively on a group blog, even. You can deduce quite a few things from basic information.

The former West Germany and France have roughly similar levels of fertility within marriage. Why is fertility so much higher in France than in West Germany? Non-marital fertility is much higher in France than in the former West Germany, where women in their reproductive ages almost have to make a choice between having children within marriage in a fairly conservative milieu (more conservative than France) and opting to have careers but to forego parenthood.

The above analysis took some number-crunching, but the raw numbers and interpretations are available. National statistical institutes in 21st century Earth regularly produce updates containing detailed information on demographic issues of all kinds, including data on specific patterns of family formation: the age of first childbirth, the sorts of relationships that are common, the number of children born into different types of relationships, and so on. This is all public domain information here on Earth, not too difficult to find if you're interested in finding it.

Andorians seem to have been suffering negative population growth for some time before Andor's secession, at least a couple of generations (though apparently not during the 22nd century). The Andorians reorganized their civilization to encourage the remaining cohorts of Andorian young are placed into arranged marriages at very early ages and to have as many children in the brief window of fertility as possible. Even if no one in Andorian civilization talked about their species' issues at all--unlikely, given how frequently demographic issues are raised in public discourse here on Earth, in connection with issues as various as pension plan funding to ethnic identity--non-Andorian observers would pick up on the shifts in Andorian family formation patterns and make informed speculation about what these shifts were supposed to do. That these radical fertility-maximizing shifts didn't stop negative population growth would also have been noticed. Basic tables would have shown that a rapid spike in the death rate wasn't responsible.

The Andorians may not have talked to non-Andorians about the true extent of their species' problems. Probably they didn't. (This implies, BTW, that the Andorians have been very isolated within the Federation for quite some time.) Even before the Andorians made their formal request for help, it would have been evident to anyone interested in the subject of the demographcis of one of the Federation's founding species that something was off.

Had they trusted their own allies instead of being scared about how they would be treated or whatever, Federation scientists might have been able to assist earlier, perhaps even during the Taurus Metagenome research.

Especially if the Taurus Metagenome had obviously and immediately relevant applications to the fertility crisis.

All I can suggest, by way of an explanation considering that Andorians were involved in the research, is two things.

1. The applications of the Taurus Metagenome to the Andorian fertility crisis are not obvious, or were not obvious in the mid- to late-23rd century.

2. Things suddenly became much worse for the Andorians after the Metagenome was classified.

There's evidence for both arguments. Cracking the Shedai genetic code was problematic, and not only for political reasons. At the same time, in the 22nd century Shran is shown in the nvoels as having been excluded from quad formation and opting for a relationship with another Andorian similarly excluded from quad formation.

 

[Stevil2001]

You're ignoring the fact that cultures in Star Trek have weirdly improbable abilities to hide aspects of their civilizations from outsiders. Apparently, not a single piece of Trill literature references talks about a Joining, and no book on Vulcan ever mentions pon farr.

 

[rfmcdpei]

You're ignoring the fact that cultures in Star Trek have weirdly improbable abilities to hide aspects of their civilizations from outsiders. Apparently, not a single piece of Trill literature references talks about a Joining, and no book on Vulcan ever mentions pon farr.

Heh.

This could suggest that the happily multispecies community the Federation views as normal is actually fairly rare, existing only on those mixed worlds established or otherwise transformed by the Federation, and that the older and more established civilizations--Vulcan and Trill and their spheres, say--are still much more homogeneous.

 

[Thestral]

^ It's certainly an interesting take on the Federation and neatly fits the facts as presented.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

in the 22nd century Shran is shown in the nvoels as having been excluded from quad formation and opting for a relationship with another Andorian similarly excluded from quad formation.

Is he? I thought that in TGTMD, Shran does join a shelthreth. He takes the place of the existing thaan who had been killed.

 

[GalaxyClass1701]

My favorite TP novel loved I thought Andor would leave pretty early on but it was a shockto see them actually do it.

The main thing that has me worried is all the hinting that Picard will leave the Enterprise. I know he can't stay forever but I don't want to see Captain Worf!!

Worf as Captain just does nothing for me. I think it would be a better story to see Worg passed up do to what happened with Jadzia and see him work under a new Captain.

 

[rfmcdpei]

in the 22nd century Shran is shown in the nvoels as having been excluded from quad formation and opting for a relationship with another Andorian similarly excluded from quad formation.

Is he? I thought that in TGTMD, Shran does join a shelthreth. He takes the place of the existing thaan who had been killed.

He does join one. It wasn't a question of biological incapacity, rather one of his career choice[/URL]; in the 22nd century, Andorians who joined the Imperial Guard didn't enter a shelthreth, presumably to preserve the integrity of the family group. His relationship with Talas was grounded in their mutual exclusion by virtue of their career choice.

Huh. Now that I'm thinking of it, this apparent Andorian tradition makes Shar's decision to not stay on Andor but rather join Srtarfleet and travel as far as the Gamma Quadrant--in his shelthreth's years of peak fertility, at that--all the more shocking to Andorian sensibilities, especially given the general deterioration.

 

[rfmcdpei]

^ It's certainly an interesting take on the Federation and neatly fits the facts as presented.

Covering up the presence of symbionts on Trill is just barely imaginable--the symbionts don't seem to have been recorded on censuses, and I'd be interested to learn of the ways in which joined Trill would form families in ways different from their unjoined counterparts. Vulcans? They're standoffish.

The scale of Andorian biological problems, and the extent to which they transformed their society to try to mitigate these problems, is something that couldn't be hidden. Even if Andorians didn't talk about it with outsiders--imaginable, I suppose, given how emotive fertility issues can be--a simple glance at the statistics would make it clear that something was going awry and that the Andorians couldn't manage it.

 

[Christopher]

You're ignoring the fact that cultures in Star Trek have weirdly improbable abilities to hide aspects of their civilizations from outsiders. Apparently, not a single piece of Trill literature references talks about a Joining, and no book on Vulcan ever mentions pon farr.

Now that you mention it, the former is rather hard to believe; I chalk it up to retconning, since "The Host" treated the Trill as a rather more mysterious and unfamiliar race, but DS9 established that they'd been part of the Federation for a long time.

But the latter is believable, since Vulcans don't discuss pon farr with each other if they can help it. Look at VGR: "Blood Fever," where Tuvok and Vorik are immensely uncomfortable at having to discuss the subject with one another. (I love the staging of that scene, the way both actors studiously avoid looking at each other the whole time.) So it stands to reason that they wouldn't have literature or poetry or art about it, except for private medical documents and maybe some deep-underground erotica.

 

[shanejayell]

"Vulcan Love Slave?"



I'm always DEEPLY amused that it's a book circulating in the Federation. Wonder what the Vulcans think about it?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Probably nothing. It is, after all, only a holosuite program. A typical Vulcan attitude would probably be that since Vulcan Love Slave doesn't hurt any actual Vulcans, and the program exists purely for recreation, it would be illogical to complain about it. In a very real sense, it IS logical that the program exists, to 'let off steam' as it were. That is, after all, the whole purpose of holoprograms like that.

on a completely unrelated matter: I'm still curious as to what people think of my question here. Meaning: What, if anything, could the Federation do, if Andor decides to join the Typhon Pact? I'm not asking if it's likely that Andor will do so (I sure hope they don't ) - just theoretically speaking, IF they do, what could the Federation possibly do about it?

Andor is no longer a member, so the Federation can't tell them what to do. Yet at the same time, Andor is in the heart of Federation space, so having a Pact member there would be an unacceptable security risk...

 

[BillJ]

Andor is no longer a member, so the Federation can't tell them what to do. Yet at the same time, Andor is in the heart of Federation space, so having a Pact member there would be an unacceptable security risk...

It would probably be like when Cuba aligned itself with the Soviet Union.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ And we all know what almost happened there...